Cast: Robert Kerman, Carl Yorke

Director: Ruggero Deodato

Screenplay: Gianfranco Clerici

Running time: 1 hr 35 mins

Genre: Horror/Exploitation



CRITIQUE:


If you happen to come across CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, what you have in your hand is rare. One that they don’t make ‘em these days. For what unfolds before you is what the Motion Picture censor boards have been frantically banning from appearing on screens. Human carnage, check. Live animal slaughter, check. Gratuitous sex, check. Primitive abortion, check. A woman impaled on a wooden stick, check. Welcome to celluloid history’s most controversial movie ever made. The most disgusting, gut-wrenching, vomit-inducing film you’ll ever see in your entire life. Now if that didn’t warn you enough, the Italian terrormeister Ruggero Deodato had made several trips to the law court for his cinematic antics, and wholly in result, making this the most banned film ever. Yes, the one which could make the Pope faint of heart attack.


This infamous 80s exploitation film, considered a snuff film by some, a Grindhouse flick, has a lot to answer for violence portrayed in cinema. It employs cinema verité, using hand-held cameras to emulate a pseudo-documentary style, which influenced THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’s approach. The plot is easy enough to follow: a New York University professor is sent to the Amazonian jungles to uncover the lost team of documentarians, and soon recovers a videotape instead, showing the team’s unfortunate fate in the hands of the cannibal tribe of Amazon. And a lot indeed is shown: a literal disembowelment of a live turtle, killing a forest monkey and shooting of a pig (all animal killings in the film were in fact real). We also have the images of a tribal woman being punished with a rather enormous wooden dildo due to adultery, a pregnant woman involving an on-screen abortion, countless of rape scenes, and cannibals beating the life out of the intruders and eating their flesh for lunch. It’s all a horrific watch, and no doubt would cause walk-outs from audience who lack the guts to watch.


This is a blazingly brilliant effort, set aside the aversion and protest. To come up with a film that shows what other films couldn’t have possibly done is a daring act. And to forcefully compel the audience to stomach its most unbearable scenes (albeit quite unsuccessfully for audiences) while not expecting for flurry of praises in return requires a bolshy, if not silly, attitude. You have to give Deodato some praise for his almost foolish bravery. But for the hellish scenes he conjured on screen, despite the gore, he tries to thrust a political and social message as to who are really the real savages, and raises question on the ethical debates on what extent can the media show to the public. His work here is an irony itself, showing what’s not meant to shown while pointing a finger to somebody else.